Just walk

Walking is the simplest thing on earth. We never give a single conscious thought to it when we are doing it, but what if we did?

Last week I stumbled into reading a book about walking meditation by Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Naht Hanh, and I loved it.

“Walking meditation is meditation while walking… When we practice this way, we feel deeply at ease… All our sorrows and anxieties drop away, and peace and joy fill our hearts. Anyone can do it. It takes only a little time, a little mindfulness, and the wish to be happy.” – The Long Road Turns to Joy, Thich Naht Hanh

After reading the book, I too decided to go for a walk, and not just any walk, but a mindful walk, like Thich Naht Hanh had described. I wanted to experience for myself what he meant by, “When we practice this way, we feel deeply at ease.”

The first thing I decided to do was to leave my phone at home. Usually I would jog with my phone so I can record my speed/distance with my running app, but with walking, I figured that there were no goals. I didn’t have a timing to hit or a distance to complete. All I needed to do was to walk. So I set off with nothing but my keys in my pocket.

I started my walk around 7.30pm. The day was turning to night very quickly, and I was surrounded by a nice blue hue. It was also a breezy night. Perfect.

When you are doing walking meditation, all you are supposed to do is to focus on walking. When thoughts inevitably arrive, your job is not to push them away but to acknowledge them without judging or identifying with them, and then to refocus your attention back on the walk. You do that over and over again (since thoughts will arise over and again over).

Now that is the practice of mindful walking – not just walking, but being fully aware that you are walking. It is the act of being fully present, which we are so terrible at in our normal lives (since we are always wanting to be doing something else, or wanting to be somewhere else).

On this first walk of mine, it was hard not to keep the thoughts coming. But I acknowledged them and tried not to attach my emotions to them. (It was not always successful, of course.) And since this was supposed to be a mindful walk, I put effort into noticing the sidewalk I was walking on, the grass field by the side of the road, the buildings in the distance.

I tried to be fully in the now.

As I walked I could feel my mind clearing. It was almost a physical sensation.

The best part was, ideas started coming to me . And here and there, solutions to some problems that I was ruminating on earlier in the day also arrived, half or fully-formed. It was almost like walking mindfully allowed the wiser, calmer part of my mind to come up to the surface.

When I got home and checked the time, what I thought was a 30-minute walk (since I didn’t bring both my phone and my watch) turned out to have taken more than an hour. Time just flew.

When I thought back on the walking session, I realized time flew because I was deeply in the moment. Yes, there were countless thoughts in my head that came and went, but my focus was on just… walking.

It was a therapeutic experience (and one of my more successful experiences at “meditating”).

This set me to thinking: why don’t we do this more often?

Walking is free, and everyone – except for those with mobility issues – can walk.

Same for mindfulness. Mindfulness is absolutely free, anyone can do it, and it’s potentially life-changing. So why don’t more people do it?

What is mindfulness?

“Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way;
On purpose,
in the present moment, and
nonjudgmentally.”
– Jon Kabat-Zinn

Mindfulness is one of those things that seems to make sense but actually makes no sense to most people.

I have actually been interested in mindfulness and meditation for years (think of mindfulness as an idea, and meditation as a method to bring that idea to life), but it was only in recent months that I began to have a more concrete concept of what mindfulness really means. (I also had zero idea how to meditate until recently, when things started to click.)

Mindfulness is simply like what Jon Kabat-Zinn is quoted as saying above. Its central tenet is simply to pay conscious attention to the present moment, without judging the moment. Almost like you are watching a movie of your life as a third party.

How can something like that be useful? Skeptics ask (that includes some of you right now).

But advocates of mindfulness – and nowadays even science (and nowadays me) – propose that mindfulness has the ability to make people happier, less anxious, feel more alive.

According to Jon Kabat-Zinn (who has helped countless people – even those who are seriously ill or in their last dying days – find strength and happiness through the practice of mindfulness), “Mindfulness is now more relevant than ever as an effective and dependable counterbalance to strengthen our health and well-being, and perhaps our very sanity.”

If that is all true, then we absolutely need mindfulness in our lives, but how do we actually do it?

It also doesn’t help that mindfulness, a word thrown around so carelessly these days, conjures up images of hippies with headbands meditating in the forest while doing yoga at the same time.

But after all these years of reading and thinking about it, and in recent months trying to actually practice it, I have first-hand experience of mindfulness as being nothing less than a positive life-changing force.

How to be here

Yes, yes, hyperbole doesn’t help. Especially coming from me the Mindfulness Novice That No One Has Ever Heard Of.

So try it for yourself.

A. Read some books about it. I highly recommend Dan Harris’ “10% Happier“. He was a skeptic but after having a panic attack that was caught on national TV, he went on a long, windy journey and discovered mindfulness/meditation, and now he is 10% (or more, I believe) happier, calmer, wiser.

You can also read books about meditation by Thich Naht Hanh, the Dalai Lama, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Joseph Goldstein, etc. There have been countless books written about the subject. Don’t be afraid to read more than one book about it, even books that are not so popular or critically acclaimed. Every book is useful in its own way and allows you to slowly understand in your head, book by book, what this whole mindfulness/meditation thing is all about. (And trust me, it takes time to sink in. But when it does… awesomeness ensues.)

E. Try meditating yourself. The following is an excerpt from Dan Harris’ “10% Happier”, as part of the instructions he included at the back of the book for people who want to try basic mindfulness meditation.

“1. Sit comfortably. You don’t have to twist yourself into a cross-legged position – unless you want to, of course. You can just sit in a chair. (You can also stand up or lie down, although the latter can sometimes result in an unintentional nap.) Whatever your position, you should keep your spine straight, but don’t strain.

2. Feel your breath. Pick a spot: nose, belly, or chest. Really try to feel the in-breath and then the out-breath.

3. This one is the key: Every time you get lost in thought – which you will, thousands of times – gently return to the breath. I cannot stress strongly enough that forgiving yourself and starting over is the whole game. As my friend and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg has written, “Beginning again and again is the actual practice, not a problem to overcome so that one day we can come to the ‘real’ meditation.”
– Dan Harris

Try

Happiness is vital to our well-being. Actually no, happiness is not just vital. It is everything (not the superficial kind of happiness but the profound kind of happiness that is all mixed in with gratitude and joy and ease and being-here-ness).

I believe mindfulness is a great path towards happiness.

All we need to do is try (and meditation allows us to try our way towards happiness). It’s not an easy practice – in fact it might be the hardest thing you have ever tried to do – but when you put in the work, results will follow.

Have fun trying, my friends, and may you learn to be happier, less anxious, and more truly alive.